New Volusia County medical examiner eager to end run of 'bad luck'

Dustin Wyatt @Dustin_WyattNJ

Friday

Jun 8, 2018 at 7:13 PMJun 9, 2018 at 1:28 PM

It's not uncommon for Dr. Jon Thogmartin to get the call for help in the wake of a crisis at a medical examiner's office.

In 2014, he was brought in to assess how things were being run in Jacksonville after a medical examiner faced allegations of mismanagement. Years earlier, St. Johns County's medical examiner unexpectedly resigned leaving a vacancy atop the department. Guess who they pegged to keep the office afloat?

That's when State Attorney R.J. Larizza met Thogmartin and witnessed his quality of work.

"I was very pleased," he said. "He's very capable and competent."

Larizza was pleasantly surprised when he learned on May 25 that Volusia County was also planning to offer a temporary job to Thogmartin, who's already poised to change operating procedures, add weekend hours and more staff with the intention of recapturing accreditation that was lost in 2015.

Yet while nobody disputes the experienced doctor's qualifications, some residents and Sheriff Mike Chitwood have questioned the timing of his job offer and whether it clouded an independent analysis he was tasked with providing.

The sheriff called for the state Attorney General to appoint an independent investigator to review the Volusia medical examiner’s office and the county’s handling of a crisis, which reached a head following the abrupt departure of Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Sara Zydowicz, who inked a letter to the state complaining of "dangerous conditions" that threatened to "tarnish her reputation," prompting her resignation after about a month on the job.

Chitwood called County Manager Jim Dinneen's process in hiring Thogmartin "shady," but the manager said he did nothing wrong and needed to move quickly. If not for Thogmartin's hiring this week by the County Council, Volusia's morgue would have been without a doctor going into this weekend.

The head of the Florida Medical Examiners Commission called Chitwood's criticism on social media "counter-productive."

"Nobody is going to want to come to an office that is in constant turmoil, that has stakeholders throwing constant barbs on social media," said Dr. Stephen Nelson, chairman of the commission. "This is not part of what a search should be for a professional. We are not talking about a dog catcher; we are talking about a pathologist and there’s only about 400 in the country."

One of the first things Thogmartin said he planned to do after assuming his role Friday was to meet with the sheriff in hopes of putting an end to the criticism. In his 20-year career that includes fixing morgues much worse than Volusia's, he's never experienced this level of online vitriol.

"It's really, really tough," he said. "I plan to meet with the sheriff. I want to say: 'Tell me what your concerns are, how can I fix them?' That’s what I do. I fix things."

'Bad luck'

Thogmartin will have his work cut out for him cleaning up an office he described as having fallen on a bit of "bad luck" lately.

In December, Marie Herrmann retired after 11 years as chief medical examiner. Her replacement, Zydowicz, surprised county leaders when she announced her intentions to resign in May and then shocked them with her letter. That was followed by assistant medical examiner Andrew Koopmeiners announcing his resignation recently to pursue another job opportunity in Georgia.

On Tuesday, the County Council voted, 6-1, on a $780,000 contract for Thogmartin to staff the office through Dec. 31, a move Thogmartin said was necessary to avoid the risk of "falling off a cliff."

How Thogmartin came to get the offer is among the questions scrutinized by Chitwood.

At Dinneen's request, the doctor toured Volusia's facility on May 25 to evaluate Zydowicz's criticisms. He did the job as a professional courtesy, he said, not charging the county. He gave a verbal report to county staff afterward, disputing Zydowicz's claims that the morgue could be dangerous. He later sent a written report to the County Council, "as a courtesy," he said.

Following the tour and verbal report, Dinneen said he asked Thogmartin if he'd be interested in the interim job. In an email sent the same day to Larizza, Dinneen made it seem like Thogmartin's hiring was a done deal.

"He (Thogmartin) will serve as interim ME," the email said.

Dinneen later said he was checking to see if the state attorney had any objections. "I would not have recommended (Thogmartin) if R.J. had come back and said there were problems," he said. "I always run it by the state attorney."

After Chitwood questioned the timing of the hiring, Councilwoman Deb Denys asked Thogmartin if the prospect of a job slanted his report, which he'd given at no charge as a professional courtesy.

"I've heard we should discredit your report because you did it for free, because we possibly may choose to hire you on a contract basis as an interim," Denys told Thogmartin.

The doctor — who's authored more than 10 scholarly publications and has served on four national and state boards during the course of his more than 20-year career — dismissed any rumors of quid pro quo.

"I have one reputation and so far it's good and I want to keep it," he said. "I'm not going to color it. I tried to keep it objective; I'm a forensic scientist, so I tried to keep it scientific."

There's nothing subjective about Thogmartin's review, said Nelson with the state commission, who had noticed discrepancies with Zydowicz's letter. For example, she claimed the office, staffed by 15 employees, needs as many as 39. That's a ridiculously high number, he said.

"There's nothing nefarious here," Nelson said. "He (Thogmartin) spent all day at the morgue, watched people conduct autopsies and was looking at policies at the morgue and procedures. On the way out of the door, he talks to the county manager and told him that this isn’t as bad as everyone says it is."

During his report to the council, Thogmartin identified issues that had been contributing to years of storage problems and hundreds of unfinished autopsy reports: no weekend hours, cooler space occupied by things that shouldn't be there, clerical workers doing work outside of their job descriptions, and other ineffective operating procedures. All problems he planned to fix.

Some council members viewed his presentation as proof that the morgue has been subject to years of mismanagement, dating back to 2015 when the office was stripped of its national accreditation due largely to staffing and space problems.

"A lot of this has been ginned up that I think is undeserved," Councilman Pat Patterson said before he and five other council members — excluding Heather Post — voted to approve a contract. "I'm happy with the direction we are going. I'm ready to move on, make the changes we need to make and get the confidence back with the public."

'Screwed up' process

Chitwood said the way Dinneen hired Thogmartin, without ensuring the public was aware when the deal was established, hurt public confidence.

"Nobody is saying anything about the doctor" or his abilities, Chitwood said in a phone interview. "But the whole process has been screwed up, and it’s in no way transparent, and it's not the way you build public trust."

He saw more evidence of that at Tuesday's meeting. After Post — the lone nay vote on the deal — grilled management about taking accountability for long-standing issues at the morgue, Dinneen told her that neither Herrmann nor Zydowicz ever asked for anything that they weren’t provided and that no complaints have gone before the state board.

On Facebook, Chitwood called attention to an email Herrmann sent to county management in 2015 after doctors from the accrediting board visited and found problems. The email mentions "significant deficiencies regarding odor in the public areas, inadequate general storage."

Given his familiarity with Thogmartin and his work, Larizza said there's no reason for anyone to doubt the doctor's assessment — or ability to make fixes in the county's morgue.

"I know Dr. Thogmartin and I’ll take his (analysis) on its face and I take him at his word," Larizza said. "He's an excellent medical examiner and he never steered me wrong. I have a positive history with him and that’s why I rely on him."

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